Keeping to the theme of railroad stations, here is an excellent photo of
the Gorgona Train Station in the prime days of the old construction town
of Gorgona. The town of Gorgona was located directly across
from the Gamboa Air Strip, just north of the Dredging Division
Headquarters in Gamboa. I have done numerous photos about Gorgona
in the past here on CZ Images. Gorgona is by far my most favorite
construction day town. Gorgona is nothing but an island today and
parts of the town under water. I have spent many hours walking the
old town looking for relics and bottles. I have learned so much
about this old town reading about it, studying photos and hands on
walking and diving around the island. Gorgona was established back
in the Spanish years as a point where travelers coming up the Chagres
River from Fort San Lorenzo would depart their cayucas and proceed on
foot on the Gorgona Trail which eventually connected to the Las Cruces
Trail. Evidently, there was a very bad set of rapids between
Gorgona and the town of Cruces where the the Las Cruces trail
began. The section of the Chagres River that had these rapids is
now buried deep in fill dirt that has made up the towns of Gamboa and
Santa Cruz.

Anyway,
this week's photo of the week is a really great shot of the old train
station and wonderful old residential buildings along main street
Gorgona. I am not sure why there was such a big crowd at the
station on this day, but must have been a special day. As
mentioned in last week's photo of the week, this station is the standard
construction design of the American Construction Day towns railroad
stations. See more old stations of this type by clicking
here.

As
I said earlier, I have walked just about every square foot of the
Gorgona Island and what you see in this photo is mostly under water
today. The old railroad bed basically ran between the front island
and back island. You can see where the rail line ran behind the
front island as a channel of water separating the islands. While
walking the rear island, I found the foundations for the large
residental buildings as you see in this photo. It was so very
interesting walking these islands. I hope to get a boat and
revisit these islands when I visit Panama this coming February.